The Lakes in My Head: Paddling an Unexplored Wilderness

By Lesli Chinnock Anderson

At forty-five years old, Lesli had earned a bachelor of science in the biological sciences, worked for nearly twenty years in a variety of medical jobs, and was halfway to completing a second degree when she was diagnosed with decompensated hydrocephalus.

Hydro what? Is that contagious? If it’s not cancer, what is it?

More importantly, will she be able to continue caring for her family, both human and animal, while learning how to care for herself?

Unsure of her future, she relies on her faith in a loving God, who guides her into a new and rewarding life using the skills and talents she’d had all along.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543413359

Lesli Chinnock Anderson

Lesli earned a Bachelor of Science degree in the biological sciences and completed a multitude of additional courses in medical and veterinary sciences. She worked for over ten years in a human hospital laboratory, and ten years as a veterinary assistant before she was diagnosed with decompensated hydrocephalus. She lives with several pets, enjoys the outdoors and perfecting her musical skills, as well as giving support to others struggling with brain injury.

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Copyright © 2017 by Lesli Chinnock Anderson.

ISBN:                    Softcover                            978-1-5434-1336-6

                              eBook                                   978-1-5434-1335-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 03/13/2019

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Table of Contents

Preface

Prologue

Chapter One: (The Diagnosis) The Drive North

Chapter Two: (What Is Hydrocephalus?) Putting In At The Water’s Edge

Chapter Three: (Brain Surgery) Lake One: The Beauty of Paddling In Sync

Chapter Four: (Post-Surgery) The First Portage: A Heavy Weight

Chapter Five: (Learning to Live With Hydrocephalus) Lake Two: Developing Muscle

Chapter Six: (School And Job Post-Surgery) The First Camp Site

Chapter Seven: (Quitting School And Job) An Unexpected Portage

Chapter Eight: (Family Life And Seizures) Lake Three: A Stormy Crossing

Chapter Nine: (No Rest) Lake Three Camp Site

Chapter Ten: (Infection And More Surgeries) The. Longest. Portage. Ever.

Chapter Eleven: (So Many Questions) Lake Four Campsite

Chapter Twelve: (The Executives And Therapies) Putzing Around & Exploring Lake Four

Chapter Thirteen: (Family Life And Daily Activities) Short Portage to Lake Five & Enjoying The Lake

Chapter Fourteen: (A Break) What Lake Is This, Again?

Chapter Fifteen: (Brain And Muscle Building) I Think I’m Getting This Portaging Thing Down Now

Chapter Sixteen: (Some Insights From The Natural World) Lake Six: Paddling & Bird Watching

Chapter Seventeen: (Life Is Hard) The Bog

Chapter Eighteen: (Parenting Parents) What? More Bog? Who Made This Map, Anyway?!

Chapter Nineteen: (Death And Loss) F (Fully) R (Rely) O (On) G (God)

Chapter Twenty (Recovery, Relief, Rejoice) An Undiscovered Lake, A Clear Flowing Stream

Chapter Twenty-One: The Kitchen & A New Diagnosis

Chapter Twenty-Two: Walking On Water: A Faith Journey

Hydrocephalus And Other Helpful Resources

Bibliography

PREFACE

I BRIEFLY TOUCH ON motherhood, parenting parents, depression, death, and hydrocephalus in this book. Please consult the resources I’ve listed at the end of the book for more information about these subjects. The Table of Contents is also set up so that it is easier to look up an event by chapter, in case the reader has a particular interest in one subject or another.

I have tried to keep the information here as factual as possible. Yet, one thing I’ve learned as I share my story with others is that people crave more than facts. We want to be reassured that we aren’t alone in our experiences. We seek companionship on our journey. We seek hope.

With that in mind, I’ve included some of my perceptions along the way, and questions I’ve had on the trip. Keep asking questions. Don’t give up. I hope sharing my experiences will help you to have less fear and more hope on your unique pilgrimage.

Written with love for my husband Ken, daughter Kaitlyn, my mom Marci, my brother Scott and sister-in-law Suzanne, and all my cousins. And for all my paddling partners, wherever you are.

—LCA

PROLOGUE

Planning The Trip

N OT ALL OF life’s twists and turns can be planned in advance.

Most of my wilderness adventures have been in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of northeastern Minnesota. Before any paddling trip in the BWCA it is important to plan and map it out. Made up of living things, wilderness is fluid and constantly changing. If you are going to travel through wilderness, you must have the proper equipment for the unpredictable events you undoubtedly will encounter. You will need to secure a permit from the Department of Natural Resources. You will need shelter, enough food for the entire trip, suitable clothing, canoe paddling equipment. I usually pack too much clothing. I have a weakness for buying rain gear and polar fleece jackets similar to how some women have a weakness for shoes. When he goes camping my husband, Ken, has a weakness for technical gadgets, only packing clean clothing as an after-thought. Okay, that was unfair; I don’t want you to get a bad impression of my husband. He would remember to pack clothing. He might not pack an extra shirt in case the one he’s wearing gets splashed on or mauled by a black bear. (Just kidding. That’s never happened to us.) Ken and I would also recommend that it is absolutely mandatory to leave a detailed plan of your trip with someone who can follow up should you unexpectedly encounter a situation you can’t handle. Someone needs to know where to search for you if you become lost.

I have for many years wanted to write a book, to be an author, though I never thought I’d be writing about myself, which is what I’m about to do. This is an awkward task for me, because I have a disability that makes story-telling difficult. I keep forgetting where I am in the story.

I was sure, having an undergraduate Bachelor’s degree in Biology with a minor in Chemistry, that my future writing would be about all things scientific: animals, plants, geography, ecology, caring for the environment, global warming, ornithology, canoe trips into vast uncharted wilderness, and topics like that.

Then, as my life continued on, I dabbled in inspirational writing. God has always been important in my life, even as a child. I tried combining writing about things biological and inspirational at the same time. Once, my work was published in a tiny, but well-distributed, devotional magazine. I guess the editors thought having an inspirational article about prayer and dolphins was different enough that people would read it and remember to pray. That’s good. That’s why I wrote it.

Though I spent almost twenty years working in several medical fields, any scientific facts I may have written about were already known and published, and I wasn’t in research, though it interested me. Plus, scientific fields are surprisingly competitive and in order to have published work one has to make a breakthrough discovery.

Yet, I never gave up wanting to write, so from early on I have written regularly in a daily journal. Writing has always been therapeutic for me, a way to get my emotions and thoughts out of my head to make room for more emotions and thoughts. I am not an extrovert, so they pile up in my brain and heart, just waiting to be released. We all need to express ourselves and develop relationships with others. Sometimes those others are human, sometimes they are animals who travel the universe with us on this wonderful, green, oxygen-filled planet called Earth.

Now, however, I have a unique reason to write. I’ve paddled a unique route. Someone wiser than I mapped it out, and provided me with the resources I would need on the trip. This paddling route was the most arduous, challenging trip I’ve ever taken and I barely left my house to complete it.

CHAPTER ONE

The Drive North

T HERE ARE MANY ways to get into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Getting there all depends on which direction you’re coming from—Canada, the Dakotas, Wisconsin, or Iowa. I have lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota almost all of my life, so my trips usually began in the Twin Cities. To get to the BWCA, I usually drove north on Interstate 35W from the Twin Cities, through Duluth, along the North Shore of Lake Superior on Highway 61, to Grand Marais and Highway 12, otherwise known as The Gunflint Trail. Turning left onto it and proceeding in a westerly direction will take you into the BWCA.

There was one turn-off that did not appear on my map: when I was forty-five years old, I slipped and fell on a wet concrete floor while working in a veterinary hospital.

People all over the world, are interested in animals and love to keep them as pets. Veterinarians are people who love animals enough that they are willing to devote their lives to learning everything about them, and to pass on that knowledge to others who love animals and need advice on their care. I was concurrently working full-time and attending night school at a local technical college to earn a degree in Veterinary Technology. Veterinary technicians are amazing people. They are the equivalent of secretary, receptionist, care nurse, surgical nurse, emergency nurse, dental hygienist, laboratory technologist, dog-walker, janitor, animal wrangler, teacher, and funeral home employee all rolled into one, and all for a long list of animal species that are surprisingly different from one another. The same drug given to a dog requires a different dosage when given to a cat, not only because of their size difference, but because of their physiological differences. Cats metabolize drugs differently from dogs…and horses, and cattle, and birds, and turtles. Veterinary staff has to know that and care for each animal appropriately. That’s a lot of knowledge to be responsible for.

So, while doing my job assisting the Veterinarians in the clinic where I worked, I walked too quickly to catch up to someone to whom I needed to speak, slipped on the freshly mopped clinic floor, and landed flat on my face. It was a concrete floor. This fall completely changed my life. My nose took most of the impact (thank you, Nose!) and it, of course, broke. While I was lying on my stomach, stunned and embarrassed, I began to laugh. I’m not sure why, except it was probably a reaction to the shock of finding myself on the clinic floor surrounded by about six staff members, all very worried about my condition. Lest you wonder, none of them were human medical doctors, so they really didn’t know how to help me; they offered to take me to a human emergency department immediately.

I wanted my husband, Ken, nearby, so after he was called, I was driven to the (human) emergency department at the nearest hospital. X-rays showed I indeed did have a broken nose, and thankfully there was no sign of a concussion. They referred me to an ear-nose-and-throat physician for follow-up treatment.

My nose healed just fine, but inside my brain, something had changed. No one knew it at that time. I began to have more and more severe headaches, some lasting a few days. Over-the-counter pain medication did not help. My family doctor and I treated the pain with various medications for migraines. I had experienced headaches all my life, but these were much worse headaches than the ones I’d had growing up. Finally, in desperation I requested that a computed tomography, or CT scan be done of my sinuses to look for possible sinus infection or—Heaven forbid—a tumor.

Once a CT or CAT scan (boy, do I know some good jokes about Cat Scans!) is performed, a radiologist has to read the scan and interpret it. That is not as easy as one might think. CT uses x-rays to take pictures of your bones and the radiologist thereby interprets also what is in the spaces between the bones. Radiology may be a science, but it is truly also an art to read radiographs and it takes time to read them correctly. I had to wait a few days for the results of my scan.

Having some medical background and having taken radiographs of animals up until this time, my inquisitive mind tried to guess what the radiologist might find. This is never a good idea. It’s far more peaceful to get on with your life and not try to diagnose yourself, yet all of us working in medicine have a tendency to do just that. I think it’s the thrill of finding your guess was correct combined with the terror of knowing the worst thing it could turn out to be. Kind of like reading a mystery novel or riding a roller coaster in an amusement park. Days of waiting for test results are never any fun anyway, but some of us make it harder by giving in to our inquiring minds.

The call I received was not the one I was expecting. You have a really nasty sinus infection or Your sinuses look normal would have been nice to hear, though the headaches were so bad I was willing to hear, You have cancer just to get this over with and begin treatment. My family doctor said quietly over the phone, You have no infection, Lesli. Your sinuses are clear. Then she paused before saying, The radiologist found something he would like to get a better look at. Could you go in for a MRI scan?

I calmly said, Okay, but I knew deep down that radiologists don’t view exposure to x-rays lightly. Physicians try to do as few x-rays as possible for that reason. And a MRI scan was a bigger procedure.

Magnetic resonance imagery uses giant magnets to take a series of pictures that the radiologist can put together to make a model of the body part in question. There was either something wrong or I had unusual sinuses. I went in for the MRI, then waited for the results. What could be so important that a radiologist would request a MRI? The hamster wheels in my inquisitive mind began to busily turn. I focused on my job and prayed nervously.

A few evenings later, while cleaning up at work after a long day, I received a phone call from my family physician. She apologized for calling me at work, saying, You have hydrocephalus, Lesli, and the only treatment I know of is surgical placement of a shunt. I will refer you to a neurosurgeon so you can discuss it with him; he will know much more than I do.

Wow. What do you say to someone who’s just told you you will likely need brain surgery? Thank you? Okay, no problem? Most people start with, What is hydrocephalus? but I already knew the answer to that.

I had heard of babies with water on the brain, but not adults. How could this happen to me at 45 years old? This wasn’t part of my trip plan; it wasn’t even covered under contingencies. I had packed food, a tent, plenty of clothing and canoe paddles. How had I missed this?

CHAPTER TWO

Putting In At The Water’s Edge

I BELIEVE A GEOGRAPHY lesson would be appropriate here. Stick with me and you’ll see how this fits into my story. Minnesota is known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes and is the birthplace of the mighty Missisissippi River. I was born and raised in Minneapolis, one of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. The Twin Cities metropolitan area is roughly in east-central Minnesota; Warroad, Minnesota, is almost as far north as you can go in the United States, except for Maine